hand holding four postcards that all have pictures or drawings of homes

My testimony to the Illinois House’s executive community in favor of the BUILD plan

May 6, 2026 / / 0 Comments

Today the Illinois House executive committee is having a subject matter hearing about Gov. Pritzker’s BUILD plan, which was introduced to the House by Rep. Kam Buckner as HB5626. Because the oral testimony list for today’s meeting was getting too long I was asked to submit my testimony in writing instead.

Thank you for inviting me to speak. My name is Steven Vance, and I am a volunteer lead Abundant Housing Illinois, a pro-housing advocacy group.

I would like to describe what a housing shortage looks like in Northeastern Illinois using two examples from current listings.

  • A 3-bedroom apartment in Evanston was listed earlier this year at $2,900 a month and advertised a move-in fee of 40% of the rent — $1,160 on top of the first month. The move-in fee is a percentage of rent so as rents rise, so would that fee.
  • A western suburban apartment building charges $75 in application fees, $300 in administrative fees, and a move-in fee that ranges between $250 and $500, depending on the applicant’s credit.

At the onset, this may not seem like a housing shortage issue, but this is what landlords can charge when renters have few options. One of the solutions for this is increasing their competition.

The Illinois legislature is the right venue to make changes to allow more housing. The case for state action rests on a structural mismatch: housing markets are regional, but zoning is local. When a single municipality blocks new homes, it pushes demand elsewhere, raising prices across a region and displacing people, or forcing them into longer commutes or out of Illinois altogether. Additionally, in the rare event that a community allows more homebuilding, pent up demand can be overwhelming. State-level reform spreads pressure evenly and equitably over neighborhoods across the state.

The study by Illinois Economic Policy Institute found that Illinois is roughly 142,000 homes short of where it needs to be, and we’re building at barely half the pace required to catch up. Every Illinoisan pays for that, but individual municipalities aren’t incentivized to fix it. Even the willing municipalities can’t solve it alone: a few good actors out of hundreds doesn’t aggregate into a sufficient response.

Some of the legislature’s responsibilities include growing our economy, spurring good jobs, and keeping the tax base healthy to fund schools, transit, and healthcare. Housing scarcity undermines all of that.

The people most harmed by scarcity — the family priced out, the senior who can’t downsize, the next generation that hasn’t moved here yet — don’t get to voice their support for housing at each village’s plan commission hearings. They are not always local constituents, but they are yours.

That Illinois has a housing shortage isn’t in serious dispute. The question this body faces is how to act on it. BUILD isn’t coming out of nowhere; in 2020, for example, there was an accessory dwelling unit bill introduced, and other housing legalization bills were introduced in the last two years. The BUILD plan creates a coherent statewide framework, pairs it with $250 million in capital funding for infrastructure, middle housing construction, and down payment assistance. BUILD is a comprehensive proposal created at a time when the politics to reduce the housing shortage should finally be aligned. 

A century ago Illinois delegated zoning authority to municipalities. The legislature has the right and responsibility to set a floor for allowing more housing when that delegation produces statewide harm. BUILD sets that floor, and adopting it is a job only this body can do and what our over 530 members are asking you to do. .

Thank you for your time and attention.

Inside the machine: visiting the O’Brien Water Reclamation Plant

May 2, 2026 / / 0 Comments

Half of all the electricity consumed at one of the largest wastewater treatment facilities in the Midwest goes to running air blowers and pumps. That was the detail that stuck with me most from Saturday’s open house at the Terrence J. O’Brien Water Reclamation Plant at the corner of Howard Street and McCormick Boulevard in Skokie, one of seven facilities operated by the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago (MWRD).

I visited with two friends; I think we left there with a clearer picture of the hidden machinery behind our region’s daily life.

Upon arriving one hears a loud and consistent noise. This turns out to be air moving through these large pipes from the blower and pump room to the aeration tanks.

A plant almost a century old

The O’Brien plant opened in October 1928. At the time, it was the largest sewage treatment facility in the world. Nearly a century later, it still serves over 1.3 million people across 143 square miles: Chicago north of Fullerton Avenue and 17 north suburban Cook County communities including Evanston, Skokie, Wilmette, Northbrook, and Glenview. Wastewater from all of those homes and businesses travels through a network of intercepting sewers beneath McCormick Boulevard before arriving at the plant’s 97-acre campus at Howard Street.

The MWRD service area map shows the locations of the seven water treatment plants (Hanover Park, Egan, Kirie, O’Brien, Stickney, Lemont, and Calumet) using a green icon. Download as PDF.

The plant was renamed for Terrence J. O’Brien, a longtime MWRD president who died in 2021. It’s one of seven plants in the district, each serving a distinct drainage area across the Chicago region.

Simpler than you’d think — and more remarkable for it

The treatment process is more straightforward than most people imagine. Incoming wastewater first passes through screens that remove large debris, then into settling tanks where solids drop out — capturing 60 to 80 percent of suspended material. After that, the water moves into aeration tanks where staff introduce what they affectionately call “bugs”: beneficial bacteria that consume the remaining organic matter. A final round of ultraviolet light disinfection kills any remaining pathogens before the treated water discharges into the North Shore Channel. This effluent is cleaner than the water in the channel.

That channel, built between 1907 and 1910, carries the plant’s effluent south toward the Chicago River — an engineered system designed to move water away from the lake and through the region. Because much of Chicago relies on combined sewers — single pipes carrying both stormwater and sewage — heavy rain events send a surge of combined flow toward the plant. It connects to TARP, the Deep Tunnel system, which captures and holds that overflow until the plant can process it. The plant handles an average of 230 million gallons per day, with surge capacity up to 450 million. At the time of our visit the plant had processed 156 million gallons.

The pump and blower room has pumps that push the water up to the first tanks, after which gravity moves the water from stage to stage. The blowers push air into the tanks so that dissolve oxygen facilitates the growth of beneficial bacteria. Left: pumps, and a small sign that counts the number of gallons pumped today. Right: a blower machine.

Touring the plant

The MWRD ran an efficient open house, with guided tours departing every 15 minutes. Our guide was a retired staffer who came back to volunteer. Before working there for 10 years he worked at a suburban municipality’s drinking water plant.

A highlight was the 1926 Pump and Blower Building, a vaulted brick-and-steel industrial hall with a skylit roof that. Inside, massive blowers push air into the aeration tanks to keep the bacteria alive and working. Those machines account for roughly half the facility’s entire electricity consumption. It’s a staggering thought: hundreds of millions of gallons treated daily, and the biggest energy draw is simply moving some air.

We weren’t allowed into the grit chamber during the open house, but our guide noted that school groups regularly visit it — and that children almost universally react to the smell by pulling their shirts over their noses.

Infrastructure worth knowing

More people should understand how the infrastructure they pay for and benefit from actually works. The O’Brien open house is a rare chance to do exactly that: to stand next to the blowers, walk past the settling tanks, and talk to the people who run it. Staff talked to us about how they test at the plant and at businesses that generate “industrial wastewater”, including breweries and metal processing facilities.

Left: primary treatment tank, where sand and gravel fall to the bottom and fats and plastic float to the top; both are skimmed and removed. Center and right: the tour guide describes the secondary treatment process in which “bugs” (beneficial bacteria) have a feast on the remaining organic matter.

The staff also test for viruses as well as fecal matter to assess the effluent’s cleanliness. The tour guide said that before the water enters the UV channels Before the UV channels the water has over 1,000 fecal coliform per 100 mL; after treatment it drops to 25, sometimes as low as 3. The MWRD’s NPDES permit sets the effluent limit at 200/100 mL as a 30-day geometric mean, so readings of 3–25 represent the plant performing well above the requirement.

The process is elegant in its logic, the history is genuinely impressive, and the scale is humbling. MWRD’s website does a better job than I at summarizing the process. The MWRD holds open houses at several of its water treatment plants each year. There are two more this month:

Chicago’s ten co-living buildings, circa 2019

May 1, 2026 / / 0 Comments

This is adapted from a piece I originally wrote for the MAP Strategies blog in January 2019, when I was consulting for them. The original is gone from their site but lives on in the Wayback Machine. I’m republishing it here because the inventory is a useful snapshot of where Chicago’s co-living market stood at the start of 2019 — a moment when it looked like co-living might become a real fixture of the city’s housing landscape. How that played out is a story for another post.

The co-living trend seems to be picking up in Chicago. Co-living is a housing arrangement where people who don’t necessarily know each other live in the same apartment and share a kitchen, but each tenant is only responsible for a lease on their own bedroom. It saves tenants money through shared facilities — typically including in-unit laundry — and many of the new co-living developments offer the same amenity package as Chicago’s market-rate apartment buildings: rooftop decks, coworking space, gyms.

Amenity floor, exterior, at The Post
The Post is a co-living building near the North/Clybourn station, which opened in 2023.

Co-living isn’t new. Unrelated adults have been sharing apartments for centuries. What’s new is the on-site amenity layer, on par with the newest apartment buildings in the city. As a renter myself, there’s a real attraction to it: you save a little money by having roommates, you don’t have to find them yourself, and you aren’t responsible for their share of the rent. Many operators bundle weekly professional cleaning into the rent, which handles the chore-wheel question. Some apartments come fully furnished.

Related: Chicago’s zoning code regulates the number of unrelated adults that a household can be designed to accommodate – laws that undo this are sometimes called “The Golden Girls Bill”. Read more.

The regulatory picture

In Chicago, co-living buildings adhere to the same zoning code standards and largely the same building code standards as a multi-family development. They are also subject to the same Affordable Requirements Ordinance (ARO) standards as a multi-unit building. Even though the standards are the same, navigating the Department of Buildings and Department of Planning & Development processes isn’t always straightforward for new co-living developers.

Ten buildings, six operators

By my count there were ten co-living buildings operating or under construction in Chicago at the start of 2019, run by a mix of local, national, and international companies. Most allowed whole-apartment leases in addition to room-by-room leases.

Common is a New York–based operator that has built a platform local developers can plug into for new construction or conversions. Three Chicago buildings:

  • 455 W Briar Pl. in Lakeview — a converted two-flat with 14 bedrooms and 8.5 bathrooms, permitted as an SRO. (“SRO” is a zoning code term; the building code calls the same thing congregate living.) This was the only conversion in Common’s Chicago portfolio at the time; everything else was new construction.
  • 2048 W Chicago Ave. in Ukrainian Village — new construction.
  • 1407 W 15th St., between the Illinois Medical District and Pilsen — under construction at the time. It later opened as Common Addams.

PMG (Property Markets Group) is a local developer that operates two co-living buildings:

  • The L in Logan Square, at 2211 N Milwaukee Ave.
  • X Chicago in University Village, at 710 W 14th St.

1237 West at 1237 W. Fullerton Ave. — A privately owned DePaul University dormitory that recently began accepting non-students. Owned and operated by The Scion Group.

Quarters at 171 N Aberdeen St. in the West Loop — The first Chicago location of Berlin-based Medici Living Group’s international Quarters brand. The building was developed by MCZ Development.

30 East Apartments in the South Loop — Opened in 2017. It’s surrounded by several colleges and universities, so the marketing leans toward students, but you don’t have to be one to live there. Developed by Gilbane and managed by Asset Campus Housing.

Bungalow is a startup that master-leases existing houses and apartments. At the time: a 5-bedroom house in Bucktown and a unit in Wicker Park.

If I missed a Chicago co-living building from that 2019 moment, let me know.

AHIL group in front of an Amtrak train

A day in Springfield with Abundant Housing Illinois

April 20, 2026 / / 0 Comments

Earlier this month I made the trip down to Springfield to volunteer with Abundant Housing Illinois, an advocacy organization pushing for more housing options across the state. It was our biggest group ever, with 39 people going from five Illinois municipalities, and most of us took Amtrak there and back.

The day was a mix of orientation, refining our housing stories and why we volunteer, and then walking the halls of the Capitol to speak with legislators and their staff. Our housing advocates talked to twenty Illinois General Assembly members about reforming local codes that prevent people from being able to afford housing all over the state. We spoke in support of the BUILD plan I wrote about earlier.

Chloe, Rep. Bob Morgan, Ben
Everyone wore their AHIL t-shirt
Gov. Pritzker happened to come down the stairs near our group
Photos by Stephen Stassen

It’s important – although inefficient – to show up in person and make the case directly. The legislators we met with were highly or quite receptive, though you never quite know what interactions or talking points will actually move the needle. All of the six bills in the BUILD plan have not yet passed committee; but that doesn’t stop them from moving forward through other means.

If you care about housing in Illinois — whether that’s affordability, supply, or just the ability to build an ADU in your backyard — Abundant Housing Illinois is worth knowing about. Join us!

Byron Nuclear Generating Station by Eric Allix Rogers
Cows graze with Byron Nuclear Generating Station in the background. Photo by Eric Allix Rogers

Comparing Illinois and Netherlands agriculture sectors

April 20, 2026 / / 0 Comments

The Netherlands has about 5 million more people than Illinois, yet fits into a fraction of the land area. Both places take agriculture seriously. So how do they compare?

I started pulling numbers in August 2022 (which I posted in a Twitter thread) and the gap was striking. Illinois agriculture generates more than $19 billion annually in commodities. The Netherlands’ agricultural sector is worth roughly $106 billion — more than five times as much, from a country smaller than West Virginia.

Grazing pasture near Gouda
A grazing pasture near Gouda, Netherlands

Illinois is no slouch

To be fair to Illinois, the state punches well above its weight in food production and processing:

  • Illinois ranks third nationally in the export of agricultural commodities, shipping $8.2 billion worth of goods to other countries.
  • With 2,640 food manufacturing companies, Illinois ranks first in the nation in processed food sales — $180 billion worth.

That $180 billion processed food figure matters. Illinois doesn’t just grow crops; it turns them into products. That’s a different and more lucrative part of the supply chain.

The Dutch numbers need an asterisk

When I first posted that the Netherlands exports $106 billion in agriculture, I had to walk it back. The Dutch import and then re-export enormous quantities of goods — Rotterdam is one of the world’s largest ports, and the Netherlands functions partly as a distribution hub for Europe. Accounting for that, their domestic origin agricultural exports are closer to $77 billion. Still more than nine times Illinois’ export figure.

The Washington Post explained how: the Netherlands is the second largest food exporter in the world by value, behind only the United States — a country with 20 times the land area. The Dutch achieve this through intensive greenhouse agriculture, precision farming, and a relentless focus on yield per square meter. (And apparently, feeding discarded stroopwafels to pigs and chickens.)

Agricultural universities: world-class programs on both sides

The agricultural excellence of both regions is reflected in their universities. Wageningen University & Research in the Netherlands holds the top global ranking from QS, and has been named the world’s most sustainable campus for nine consecutive years (it’s 12-mile bike ride west of Arnhem). Its research focuses on food systems, climate resilience, and sustainable farming—precisely the disciplines that underpin the Netherlands’ intensive, high-yield agricultural model.

In Illinois, the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign’s College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences (ACES) ranks among the nation’s top programs in crop sciences and agricultural engineering. UIUC is home to the Morrow Plots, established in 1876 as the oldest continuous agronomic research site in the United States, and its researchers drive advances in plant genetics and biotechnology that benefit Midwest grain production. That both regions produce top-ranked agricultural universities is no coincidence: world-class farming and world-class research reinforce each other.

The cost of intensity: a manure crisis

The Netherlands’ agricultural output is so intensive that waste manure now exceeds the country’s own environmental standards. The national government has been working out how to actively contract the agriculture industry to bring nitrogen emissions under control. The productivity that made Dutch farming famous is now colliding with environmental limits in a country that has almost no room to absorb the runoff.

That tension doesn’t resolve the admiration for what Dutch farmers have built, but it’s an important caveat to any “why can’t we farm like the Dutch” argument.

Dutch expertise travels

Despite the domestic pressures, Dutch agricultural knowledge is in demand globally. In January 2023, Dutch farming firms brought their expertise to Kentucky.

By May 2023, Rotterdam had opened a floating cattle farm — a multi-story farm built on a barge in the harbor, producing milk within the city. You can tour Floating Farm.

From farmland to transit: the same underlying lesson

By early 2024 the thread had drifted from agriculture to land use and transit. The same constraint that pushes Dutch farmers into vertical greenhouses and floating barns shapes how the Dutch build cities and move people.

In May 2022, CTA and Metra together provided 315,481 rail rides per day. The Dutch national railway (“NS”) carried over 1,000,000 per day. The raw gap is about 3.2x, but the Netherlands has 2.1x more people than the seven-county Chicago metro region, so on a per-capita basis NS carries about 1.5x more rides per resident per day than CTA and Metra combined — and that’s before counting Amsterdam, Rotterdam, and The Hague’s separate tram and metro systems.

In February 2024, NS announced its 2025 timetable. One change stood out: they were going to increase service to every 10 minutes between The Hague, Rotterdam, and Dordrecht. To put that in Chicago terms, it would be like Metra running through-trains from Hyde Park to Highland Park every 10 minutes because it takes about two hours today, with frequencies every 1-2 hours (We should #BuildTheTunnel.)

The travel time comparison makes it even starker. The Hague to Dordrecht via Rotterdam takes a fraction of the time it takes to travel a comparable corridor in the Chicago region — not because the trains are faster, but because the network is integrated, the frequency is high, and stations are where people actually want to go.

What connects all of this

The Netherlands has spent decades — centuries, really — solving the problem of doing more with less space. In agriculture, that means precision, intensity, and now painful reckoning with environmental limits. In cities and transit, it means integrated networks, high frequency, and land use patterns that make transit work.